The Pipe of Peace

'The parish shall be Kildonan.'

As Lord Selkirk spoke, he was standing in what is to-day the
northern part of the city of Winnipeg. A large gathering of settlers listened to
his words. The refugees of the year before, who were encamped on the Jack River,
had returned to their homes, and now, in instituting a parish for them and
creating the first local division in Assiniboia, Lord Selkirk was giving it a
name reminiscent of the vales of Sutherlandshire. 'Here you shall build your
church,' continued his lordship. The Earl of Selkirk's religion was deep-seated,
and he was resolved to make adequate pro-vision for public worship. 'And that
lot,' he said, indicating a piece of ground across a rivulet known as Parsonage
Creek, 'is for a school.' For his time he held what was advanced radical
doctrine in regard to education, for he believed that there should be a common
school in every parish. Selkirk's genial presence and his magnanimity of
character quickly banished any prejudices which the colonists had formed against
him. In view of the hardships they had endured, he divided among them, free of
all dues, some additional land. To the dis-charged soldiers he gave land on both
sides of the river. They were to live not far re-moved from Fort Douglas, in
order that they might give speedy aid in case of trouble. The settlers were
enjoined to open roads, construct bridges, and build flour-mills at convenient
places.

Meanwhile, the disturbances in the fur country were being considered in the
mother-land. When news of the Seven Oaks affair and of other acts of violence
reached Great Britain, Lord Bathurst thought that the home government should
take action. He sent an official note to Sir John Sherbrooke, the governor of
Canada, instructing him to deal with the situation. Sherbrooke was to see that
the forts, buildings, and property involved in the unhappy conflict should be
restored to their rightful owners, and that illegal restrictions on trade should
be removed. When Sherbrooke received this dispatch, in February 1817, he
selected two military officers, Lieutenant Colonel Coltman and Major Fletcher,
to go to the Indian Territories in order to arbitrate upon the questions causing
dissension. The two commissioners left Montreal in May, escorted by forty men of
the 37th regiment. From Sault Ste Marie, Coltman journeyed on ahead, and arrived
at 'the Forks ' on July 5. In Montreal he had formed the opinion that Lord
Selkirk was a domineering autocrat. Now, however, he concluded after inquiry
that Selkirk was neither irrational nor self-seeking, and advised that the
accusations against him should not be brought into the courts. At the same time
he bound Selkirk under bail of £10,000 to appear in Canada for trial. When
Coltman returned to Lower Canada in the autumn of 1 8 17, Sherbrooke was able to
write the Colonial Office that 'a degree of tranquility ' had been restored to
the Indian Territories.

While in the west Lord Selkirk had gained the respect of the Indians, and in
token of their admiration they gave him the unusual name of the 'Silver Chief.'
Selkirk was anxious to extinguish the ancient title which the Indians had to the
lands of Assiniboia, in order to prevent future disputes. To affect this he
brought together at Fort Douglas a body of chiefs who represented the Cree and
Saulteaux nations. The Indian chiefs made eloquent speeches. They said that they
were willing to surrender their claim to a strip on either side of the Red River
up-stream from its mouth as far as the Red Lake river (now Grand Forks, North
Dakota), and on either side of the Assiniboine as far as its junction with the
Muskrat. Selkirk's desire was to obtain as much on each bank of these streams
for the length agreed upon as could be seen under a horse's belly towards the
horizon, or approximately two miles, and the Indians agreed. At three places at
Fort Douglas, Fort Daer, and the confluence of the Red and Red Lake rivers,
Selkirk wished to secure about six miles on each side of the Red River, and to
this the chiefs agreed. In the end, on July i8, 1817, Selkirk concluded a
treaty, after distributing presents. It was the first treaty made by a subject
of Great Britain with the tribes of Rupert's Land. In signing it the several
chiefs drew odd pictures of animals on a rough map of the territory in question.
These animals were their respective totems and were placed opposite the regions
over which they claimed authority. It was stipulated that one hundred pounds of
good tobacco should be given annually to each nation.

Having finished his work, Lord Selkirk bade the colony adieu and journeyed
south-ward. He made his way through the un-organized territories which had
belonged to the United States since the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and at
length reached the town of St Louis on the Mississippi. Thence he proceeded to
the New England States, and by way of Albany reached the province of Upper
Canada. Here he found that the agents of the North- West Company had been busy
with plans to attack him in the courts. There were four charges against him, and
he was ordered to appear at Sandwich, a judicial centre on the Detroit. The
accusations related to his procedure at Fort William. Selkirk travelled to
Sandwich. One of the charges was quickly dismissed. The other three were held
over, pending the arrival of witnesses, and he was released on bail to the
amount of £350.

In May 1818 Colin Robertson and several others were charged at Montreal with the
willful destruction of Fort Gibraltar, but the jury would not convict the
accused upon the evidence presented. In September, at the judicial sessions at
Sandwich, Lord Selkirk was again faced with charges. A legal celebrity of the
day, Chief Justice Dummer Powell, presided. The grand jury complained that John
Beverley Robinson, the attorney-general of the province, was interfering with
their deliberations, and they refused to make a presentment. Chief Justice
Powell waited two days for their answer, and as it was not forthcoming he
adjourned the case. The actions were afterwards taken to York and were tried
there. For some reason the leaders of the political faction known in the annals
of Upper Canada as the Family Compact were not friendly to Lord Selkirk; the
Rev. John Strachan, the father-confessor of this group of politicians, was an
open opponent. As a result of the trials Selkirk was mulcted in damages to the
extent of £2000.

The courts of Lower Canada alone were empowered to deal with
offences in the Indian Territories. The governor-general of Canada could,
however, transfer the trial of such cases to Upper Canada, if he saw fit. This
had been done in the case of the charges against Selkirk, and Sir John
Sherbrooke, after consulting with the home authorities, decided to refer
Selkirk's charges against the Nor'westers, in connection with the events of 18
15 and 1816 on the Red River, to the court of the King's Bench at its autumn
sitting in York. Beginning in October 1818, there were successive trials of
persons accused by Lord Selkirk of various crimes. The cases were heard by Chief
Justice Powell, assisted by Judges Boulton and Campbell. The evidence in regard
to the massacre at Seven Oaks was full of interest. A passage from the speech of
one of the counsel for the defense shows the ideas then current in Canada as to
the value of the prairie country. Sherwood, one of the counsel, emphatically
declared that Robert Semple was not a governor; he was an emperor. 'Yes,
gentlemen,' reiterated Sherwood, his voice rising, 'I repeat, an emperor, a
bashaw in that land of milk and honey, where nothing, not even a blade of corn,
will ripen.' The result of the trials was disheartening to Selkirk. Of the
various prisoners who were accused not one was found guilty.

Lord Selkirk did not attend the trials of the Nor'westers at York, and seems to
have returned to Britain with his wife and children before the end of the year
1818. He was ill and in a most melancholy state of mind.
Unquestionably, he had not secured a full measure of justice in the courts of
Canada. A man strong in health might have borne his misfortunes more lightly. As
it was, Selkirk let his wrongs prey upon his spirit. On March 19, 1819, he
addressed a letter to Lord Liverpool, asking that the Privy Council should
intervene in order to correct the erroneous findings of the Canadian courts. Sir
James Montgomery, Selkirk's brother-in-law, moved in the House of Commons, on
June 24, that all official correspondence touching Selkirk's affairs should be
produced. The result was the publication of a large blue-book. An effort was
made to induce Sir Walter Scott to use his literary talents on his friend's
behalf. But at the time Scott was prostrate with illness and unable to help the
friend of his youth.

Meanwhile, Lord Selkirk's attachment for his colony on the Red
River had not undergone any change. One of the last acts of his life was to seek
settlers in Switzerland, and a considerable number of Swiss families were
persuaded to migrate to Assiniboia. But the heads of these families were not
fitted for pioneer life on the prairie. For the most part they were poor
musicians, pastry-cooks, clockmakers, and the like, who knew nothing of
husbandry. Their chief contribution to the colony was a number of buxom,
red-cheeked daughters, whose arrival in 1821 created a joyful commotion among
the military bachelors at the settlement. The fair newcomers were quickly wooed
and won by the men who had served in Napoleon's wars, and numerous marriages
followed.

Selkirk's continued ill -health caused him to seek the temperate climate of the
south of France, and there he died on April 8, 1820, at Pau, in the foothills of
the Pyrenees. His body was taken to Orthez, a small town some twenty-five miles
away, and buried there in the Protestant cemetery. The length of two countries
separates Lord Selkirk's place of burial from his place of birth. He has a
monument in Scotland and a monument in France, but his most enduring monument is
the great Canadian West of which he was the true founder. His only son, Dunbar
James Douglas, inherited the title, and when he died in 1885 the line of Selkirk
became extinct. Long before this the Selkirk family had broken the tie with the
Canadian West. In 1836 their rights in the country of Assiniboia, in so far as
it lay in British territory, were purchased by the Hudson's Bay Company for the
sum of £84,000.

The character of the fifth Earl of Selkirk has been alike lauded and vilified.
Shortly after his death the Gentleman's Magazine commended his benefactions to
the poor and his kindness as a landlord. 'To the counsels of an enlightened
philosophy and an immovable firmness of purpose declared the writer, 'he added
the most complete habits of business and a perfect knowledge of affairs. Sir
Walter Scott wrote of Selkirk with abundant fervor. 'I never knew in my life,'
said the Wizard of the North, 'a man of a more generous and disinterested
disposition, or one whose talents and perseverance were better qualified to
bring great and national schemes to conclusion.' History has proved that Lord
Selkirk was a man of dreams; it is false to say, however, that his were
fruitless visions. Time has fully justified his colonizing activity in relation
to settlement on the Red River. He was firmly convinced of what few in his day
believed, that the soil of the prairie was fruitful and would give bread to the
sower. His worst fault was his partisanship. In his eyes the Hudson's Bay
Company was endowed with all the virtues; and he never properly analyzed the
motives or recognized the achievements of its great rival. Had he but ordered
his representatives in Assiniboia to meet the Nor'westers half-way, distress and
hardship might have been lessened, and violence might very probably have been
entirely avoided.

The presence of Lord Selkirk on the Red River had led to renewed energy on the
part of the colonists. They began to till the land, and in 1818 the grain and
vegetable crops promised an abundant yield. In July, how-ever, when the time of
harvest was approaching, the settlers experienced a calamity that brought
poverty for the present and despair for the future. The sky was suddenly
darkened by a great cloud of locusts, which had come from their breeding-places
in the far south-west. During a single night, 'crops, gardens, and every green
herb in the settlement had perished, with the exception of a few ears of barley
gleaned in the women's aprons.' In the following year the plague reappeared; the
insects came again, covering the ground so thickly that they 'might be shoveled
with a spade.' The stock of seed-grain was now almost exhausted, and the
colonists resolved to send an expedition to the Mississippi for a fresh supply.
Two hundred and fifty bushels of grain were secured at Lord Selkirk's expense,
and brought back on flat-boats to the colony. Never since that time has there
been a serious lack of seed on the Red River.

The year 1821 brings us to a milestone in the history of the Canadian
West, and at this point our story terminates. After Lord Selkirk's death the two
great fur -trading companies realized the folly of continuing their disastrous
rivalry, and made preparations to bury their differences. Neither company had
been making satisfactory profits. In Great Britain especially, where only the
echoes of the struggle had been heard, was there an increasing desire that the
two companies should unite. One of the foremost partners of the North-West
Company was Edward Ellice, a native of Aberdeenshire, and member of the House of
Commons for Coventry. Ellice championed the party among the Nor'westers who were
in favor of union, and the two M'Gillivrays, Simon and William, earnestly
seconded his efforts. Terms acceptable to both companies were at length agreed
upon. On March 26, 1821, a formal document, called a 'deed-poll,' outlining the
basis of union, was signed by the two parties in London. In 1822 Edward Ellice
introduced a bill in parliament making the union of the companies legal. The
name of the North-West Company was dropped; the new corporation was to be known
as the Hudson's Bay Company. Thus passed away forever the singular partnership
of the North-West Company which had made Montreal a market for furs and had
built up Fort William in the depths of the forest. No longer did two rival
trading posts stand by lake or stream. No longer did two rival camp-fires light
up blazed tree-trunk or grass-strewn prairie by the long and sinuous trail. From
Labrador to Vancouver, and from the Arctic to the southern confines of the
Canadian West and farther, the British flag, with H. B. C. on its folds, was to
wave over every trading post. Midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific a
little hamlet was to struggle into life, to struggle feebly for many years a
mere adjunct of a fur-trading post; but at length it was to come into its own,
and Winnipeg, the proudest city of the plains, was in time to rear its palaces
on the spot where for long years the Red River Colony battled for existence
against human enemies and the obstacles of nature.

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The Red River Colony, A Chronicle of the
Beginnings of Manitoba, By Louis Aubrey Wood, Toronto, Glasgow,
Brook & Company 1915